Advising Guidelines
Plans of study are outlined on the respective degree pages to determine the course sequencing and requirements. Depending on a student’s pathway, there may be other milestones along the way that students need to be aware of, particularly if they are pursuing a thesis.
Student’s Role and Responsibilities
The Office of Graduate Studies assists in tracking student progress through the program, paying attention to the courses students take and their research progress. Students, however, are ultimately responsible for their own success and adequate progression. Students must keep track of their plan of study, ensure they are successfully completing required coursework, and actively engaged with their department chair, research advisor, or GA supervisor (if applicable). Additionally, some departments may have timelines and processes that differ from those outlined here.
Time Commitment
As a graduate student, you are not just here to take classes and get a degree. You are expected to produce quality work throughout your program. Coursework requirements and demands are more rigorous than those for undergraduates, and you are expected to produce professional-grade work throughout your program. Consider, carefully, how you are funded, what you need to live on, and whether you can dedicate the time required to be successful.
Submission of Graduate Forms
All official forms for the program may be found on the University Registrar’s webpage at https://floridapoly.edu/registrar/forms.php. Forms can be submitted directly to the Registrar’s Office, or to the Office of Graduate Studies if a Graduate Director signature is needed.
Advisor’s Role and Responsibilities
Upon entering a program at Florida Poly, you will be assigned a temporary advisor (usually the Department Chair) until an appropriate faculty member has been identified in your selected track. Students pursuing a thesis will also select an advisor for those functions who will assume all related advising responsibilities.The role of the Advisor includes, but is not limited to keeping students informed of:
- Key policies
- Important dates
- Curricular expectations, including courses required, course sequences, and research expectations
and to work in association with the student on Departmental and University processes for:
- Thesis proposal
- Committee selection
- Timelines
- Thesis oral defense
- Final submission of thesis to all appropriate offices
If this initial advisor becomes the committee chair and supervises the student’s research, the advisor also sets regular expectations and deliverables for the student to follow.
Note on Supervision of Graduate Assistants
The faculty member to whom a graduate assistant is assigned may not be the student’s advisor. Supervising faculty only interact with graduate assistants as it relates to instructional support, not research or other program advising. Depending on need and availability, a graduate assistant may be assigned to a faculty supervisor outside of their department. For clarity’s sake, the faculty member to whom the graduate student reports for work purposes is best referred to as the student’s “supervisor.”
Course-Only Pathway
Students in the one-year accelerated pathway complete a course-work only master’s degree in approximately 10 months. These students do not research and write a thesis. Rather, their master’s consists of work solely confined to the courses in the plan of study. Course-only students may conduct research but it is done so through the framework of a given course. The standards for successful completion of coursework are no different for these students than for thesis students and they generally take the same courses.
In addition to the course plan indicated on their program-track page, students should also pay attention to other deadlines communicated by the Office of Graduate Studies and/or the Office of the Registrar, including course registration deadlines, graduate application deadlines, and add/drop dates.
Thesis Pathway
Completion of a thesis requires a great deal of time throughout the entirety of the program, not limited to the semesters in which Thesis courses are taken. Thesis-related work often requires student effort outside of the normal course-requirements and, if applicable, GA time. This means students need to plan to put in hours on-top of their planned schedule to work on thesis pre- and proposals. More on this can be found in the Thesis Timeline and Procedures.
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